This disclosure relates generally to presenting content to users of an online system, and more specifically to selecting different geographic regions for presenting content via the online system to evaluate the presented content.
Online systems, such as social networking systems, allow users to connect to and to communicate with other users of the online system. Users may create profiles on an online system that are tied to their identities and include information about the users, such as interests and demographic information. The users may be individuals or entities such as corporations or charities. Online systems allow users to easily communicate and to share content with other online system users by providing content to an online system for presentation to other users. Content provided to an online system by a user may be declarative information provided by a user, status updates, check-ins to locations, images, photographs, videos, text data, or any other information a user wishes to share with additional users of the online system. An online system may also generate content for presentation to a user, such as content describing actions taken by other users on the online system.
Additionally, many online systems commonly allow publishing users (e.g., businesses) to sponsor presentation of content on an online system to gain public attention for a user's products or services or to persuade other users to take an action regarding the publishing user's products or services. Content for which the online system receives compensation in exchange for presenting to users is referred to as “sponsored content.” Many online systems receive compensation from a publishing user for presenting online system users with certain types of sponsored content provided by the publishing user. Frequently, online systems charge a publishing user for each presentation of sponsored content to an online system user or for each interaction with sponsored content by an online system user. For example, an online system receives compensation from a publishing user each time a content item provided by the publishing user is displayed to another user on the online system or each time another user is presented with a content item on the online system and interacts with the content item (e.g., selects a link included in the content item), or each time another user performs another action after being presented with the content item.
A publishing user providing content to an online system for presentation to other online system users often seeks to evaluate effectiveness of the content in causing other online system users to take action. For example, the publishing user seeks to determine whether users to whom a content item was presented via the online system more frequently visited a physical location than other users to whom the content item was not presented. Presenting content to users and withholding content to other users who have matching or similar characteristics of users to whom the content was presented allows the online system to more accurately evaluates effectiveness of the content in causing user action. However, if effectiveness of a content item is based on causing users to visit a physical location, the online system may have a limited number of users within a threshold distance of the physical location, impairing the online system's ability to identify similar users to whom the content item is presented and to whom the content item is withheld. As users in different geographic regions may have different characteristics, the purchasing user may be unable to readily identify users to whom a content item is presented in a different geographic location that has a corresponding physical location who have characteristics matching or similar to users in another geographic region to whom the content item was withheld from presentation. This may impair a publishing user's ability to accurately assess effectiveness of a content item in causing online system users to visit a physical location.